Date of Award
Spring 5-21-2022
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
MA - Master of Arts
Department
Expressive Therapies
Advisor
Donna C Owens
Abstract
Bereavement is a topic of clinical counseling that is limited in the education of clinical counselors. This is possibly due to bereavement not being a required course for state licensure or CACREP standards; thus, it stands as a lower priority for colleges/universities to offer a course in this subject. I sought to research new counselors’ perspectives on supporting clients who have experienced bereavement as they may not have had any foundational education on bereavement. Multiple articles have recommended that bereavement should be a prioritized course in master’s level counseling education. As an expressive arts therapy student and counselor in training, I wanted to emphasize a more person-centered expressive therapy approach as each bereavement experience is unique, and that this form of therapy is a nonverbal expression which may be more inviting to clients as sometimes grief is beyond words/talk therapy. This search was conducted through databases to locate articles and utilized resources from community-based bereavement centers and local libraries. Due to grief theories being developed for a longer period of time, the research was published from 1917 to the present. The purpose of this literature review was to provide awareness and recommendations on bereavement, grief, and loss and the incorporation of the expressive therapies for professionals in the counseling field.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.
Recommended Citation
Frazer, Kayla, "Prioritizing Bereavement in Counseling Education and Expressive Therapies: A Critical Review of the Literature" (2022). Expressive Therapies Capstone Theses. 614.
https://digitalcommons.lesley.edu/expressive_theses/614
Included in
Rights
The author owns the copyright to this work.
